


Blueberry Peach Jam

by houxvertetbruyere



Series: Neighbors [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Domestic Fluff, English Teacher Jim Kirk, M/M, New England, Pining, Power Outage, nor'easter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26871907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/houxvertetbruyere/pseuds/houxvertetbruyere
Summary: Jim has a new neighbor from the south who is deeply unprepared for a New England winter but it's okay- Jim's place is big enough for two.This part has no sex, future parts will be explicit.Trektober Day 6 - Neighbors
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Series: Neighbors [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1960426
Comments: 19
Kudos: 77
Collections: Trektober 2020





	Blueberry Peach Jam

**Author's Note:**

> This prompt is the one that made me really want to do Trektober. The other parts are coming on separate days.
> 
> Finished right before midnight- will fix the mistakes when I get a day off. 
> 
> Also idk if any of y'all were raised in the forest but my driveway growing up was a quarter mile long and if we wanted to see the neighbors it made more sense to go through the woods so this is based on real life.

Jim is returning from the store with wide-mouth jar lids when he sees the “For Sale” sign being pulled out from the end of his next door neighbor’s driveway. It’s been on the market for almost a year with no serious interest. He can’t imagine how relieved the Phloxes must be to finally get a seller. 

Just in time, too. The leaves have already turned their respective shades of red and gold. Jim won’t have to worry about maintaining their empty house throughout the long New Hampshire winter. Not that turning on the heat and water periodically to prevent burst pipes is much of a hardship but still. 

He wonders what his new neighbor(s) might be like. He tries not to hope that they could be his own age.

Jim finishes canning the last of his tomatoes that weekend. There’s a frost coming and he has to pick the rest of the fat, late-season cucumbers he uses for pickling before they freeze but otherwise he has no plans for the evening. He finished grading his AP Lit tests before leaving school Friday and it’s early enough in the semester that he doesn’t have any drafts of essays to check. 

Now’s the perfect time to play friendly neighbor, he decides.

He pulls on his boots and a flannel and gathers a few jars of his homemade goods in a tote bag before heading out. 

The sun is shining through the golden foliage as he trudges through the woods. His boots kick up the rich smell of decomposing leaves and pine needles. There are squirrels chittering all around, scrambling up trees and peering at him from logs. It’s days like today that make him glad he moved back home. His time in San Francisco was amazing, of course, and he made some good friends at school, but there’s really nothing like fall in New England. 

There’s no one in sight when Jim makes it to the front of the house. There’s a jeep with Georgia plates and a Wentworth Douglass Hospital parking sticker in the driveway. Both the front door and the garage door are open. A whole bunch of boxes are stacked up in the garage with big sharpied words like BEDROOM and STUDY.

His curiosity wins against his better judgment and he strides to the front door and sticks his head in to take a peek. He’s been wondering what new people might have done with the place since he’d last seen it.

It’s still weird seeing it so empty. There’s a couch in the living room and it looks like someone stopped in the process of mounting a flat screen to the wall. 

“Jesus!” A man shouts from the driveway behind him. Jim jumps. “Who the hell are you?”

“Sorry!” Jim says, whipping around, his hands up in front of him. “Didn’t mean to scare you! Just came to say hello. I’m your neighbor.” He points back to the woods from whence he came as if that explains everything although they can’t actually see his house from here. It’s probably a bit not good, him showing up out of the woods like this.

“The name’s Jim Kirk.” And oh wow, New Neighbor is hot. He’s got dark features with a chiseled jawline. The muscles of his forearms are on display with his overshirt rolled up to the elbow. The tee shirt he’s wearing has a skateboarding skeleton on it over the word BONES. Jim looks him up and down, trying not to be too obvious about it, while he waits for the man to notice the hand he’s holding out.

The man just stares at it. 

“Uh, I’m number eight. Sorry, I came through the woods ‘cause it’s faster than going all the way down my driveway and then all the way up your driveway. I was friends with the folks who used to live here. Didn’t think about the fact that you might find that weird.” He talks a lot when he’s nervous. Of course, he’d be a lot less nervous if the man would _say something_.

This is not going as well as he’d hoped. Jim drops his hand.

“Uh, I’ve been doing some canning.” He says, holding out the gifts he brought. Maybe treats will grease the wheels? “There are some tomatoes from my garden and uh, a jar of salsa- it’s a little spicy, watch out. There’s some blueberry peach jam, it's a great combo if you haven't had it, and a few zucchini muffins. I didn’t know how many of you there would be. Or, I mean, how many people. In your family.”

The man blinks at him. Then very slowly takes Jim’s proffered bag. 

“It’s just me,” the man says. “Leonard.” He peers inside the bag but otherwise doesn’t say thank you or offer to let Jim come inside or… anything.

“Okay, cool. Well, I’m almost always around if you need anything. Except for during school hours- I’m a high school teacher. And in the spring I coach basketball after school. But, yeah usually around. Um, all the other houses on the street are retired couples so I plow their driveways with my truck in the winter. If you want I can-”

“No. No, that’s okay. I’ve got the number for a service.”

“Oh. Okay, cool. Uh, I guess I should let you get back to it then.” Leonard’s face gets a bit constipated at that. Okay, what in the hell. This guy’s license plates are from Georgia- aren’t southerners supposed to be friendly?

“Oh! Before I forget,” Jim digs out the key in his pocket. “Here. You probably changed the locks anyway but,” he shrugs, “I used to look after the place when the old owners went out of town.”

The man takes the key but stays silent. Jesus, Jim’s had less awkward experiences grading his students’ fanfiction. 

“Okay well, see ya.” Jim says, waving, and walks back into the woods. They feel a lot less cozy and beautiful now that he’s somehow made an utter ass of himself to the hot new neighbor. He’s usually so good with people. Even the coldest New Englander warms to Jim’s charms. 

Or maybe, Jim thinks, old Bones back there is just an asshole.

-+-

Jim doesn’t see his neighbor again for two months and one week. He only knows he’s alive because he can sometimes see distant lights through the trees from his bedroom window. As it gets colder and the leaves fall he can sometimes make out headlights as the man makes the long drive up or down his driveway. So yeah, he knows he’s alive but that’s about all he knows.

They don’t cross paths getting the mail at the end of their driveways, he never appears at the town dump, and his friend Kevin who manages the grocery store down the street believes he’s seen the man only once and that all he bought was several gallons of water.

It’s kind of bizarre but really, Jim understands recluses, he’s just used to them being older and more… salt of the earth. 

He’s busy with teaching anyway so it’s not like he gives a lot of thought to the sexy southern hermit through the woods. 

His seniors have college applications so he has a handful of letters of recommendation to write on top of their entrance essays he’s agreed to look over. And all of that is on top of his actual schoolwork which he can no longer get graded during prep periods. 

It’s always this time of year he envies math teachers like Mr. Scott who can just send their multiple choice tests through a scantron machine and call it a day.

The end of the semester is looming. As a gift more to himself than to his kids Jim has the last week of classes be a mix of handing back papers and throwing parties. Technically their school district has rules against this sort of thing but Jim’s great at skirting around stupid regulations. For instance, the Beowolf inspired white elephant gift exchange for his Brit Lit kids is part of his curriculum to show their grasp of symbolism.

Very lamely, the storm they’ve been predicting all week would hit the coast on Friday night lands early Friday morning. 

By the time his alarm goes off at 5:15 there’s only four inches of snow but everything is coated in thick ice. The thin birch trees around his backyard are bowed low under the weight. Great, that means power lines are next. Jim sighs and turns on the TV to the news while he lights a fire in the woodstove. 

School is cancelled by 5:45am and by 6:10 the power is out. Last night’s holiday baking will not be shared with his students. He really doesn’t need the temptation to eat them all himself, though, so he packs them into little cardboard takeout boxes he got online and puts them in his truck to share with his neighbors after he shovels them out. 

He puts two more logs on the fire- he’d hate to come home cold, wet, unable to shower, and have to restart the fire from scratch too. Then he attaches the plow to the front of his truck and heads out. 

He’ll have to plow a second time when the storm lets up but he’s not worried- it’s not like he has anything else to do. Besides, the Tylers, a mile down the street, have caregivers that need to be able to access their driveway and Maj gets Meals on Wheels on weekdays.

He shovels each of their porches and checks on them individually when he drops off their cookies. Most of them have generators, thank God. Maj has a wood stove like him that he makes sure is going good and hot before heading back out. He’d hate to find out one of his neighbors was cold or hungry when he could do something about it.

On his way back into his own driveway he notices Bones’ driveway (he’s accidentally gotten enough of his mail by now to know that the man’s full name is Leonard H. McCoy M.D. but he was weird and rude and it pleases Jim to think he’d be annoyed by the nickname) hasn’t been touched. There are no tire tracks indicating the man either hasn’t gotten back from the hospital yet or hasn’t left- he’s not sure what kind of hours the man keeps.

He frowns hoping whatever service Bones has hired to plow him out shows up soon. It’s unseasonably cold for December and the ice is already a bitch.

After shoveling off his porch and breaking the ice out of his rain gutter he goes inside to warm up. His place is cozy in the morning light, with the complete silence of a power outage broken only by the crackling fire. 

Cozy but also… missing something. 

The loneliness he’s able to keep at bay most of the time rises to the surface as he looks around the empty space. It’s an ache that makes his chest feel caved in. He can’t help but think how nice it would be to curl up under the blankets with someone and watch the world turn into a postcard outside the window. There hasn’t been anyone serious since… well since Gaila in college. And that was six years ago, now.

Fuck, he’s getting maudlin lately. He shakes himself out of it as much as he can and lights his stove with a match to boil some water for coffee. 

When Bones’ driveway still isn’t plowed on Jim’s second pass he starts to really worry. It’s only just past 11 but any plow guy worth anything would have come by at least once by now. Maybe the man didn’t even call them? Maybe he was out when the storm hit and he’s decided to stay somewhere else for the day? It’s entirely possible that he could have a significant other to crash with, or even a hookup, Jim wouldn’t know.

But his driveway has over a foot of snow piled up, now and it’s a very long driveway. If Bones has been abandoned by this plow guy he’ll have no way to get out.

Jim decided he’ll plow it himself, but only if it’s still in need when he goes down to the grocery store after lunch. He needs wine for his beef stew.

-+-

So, not only is Jim an idiot, he’s also an idiot who forgot to give his hot neighbor his number. He kind of assumed when he said “I’m around if you need anything” that the man would take it as an invitation to come over. But of course not everyone is comfortable just traipsing over the river and through the woods to strangers’ houses.

Well, hindsight’s 20/20 and all that.

He starts plowing Bones’ driveway at 1:15 and doesn’t get up to the house until 1:35. He’s very familiar with its twists and turns, knows exactly where to shove the big piles of snow off to the side as he goes. 

He’s into his rhythm when he sees the dark hunched figure of the man trying to shovel the ten square feet right in front of his garage where the plow can’t reach. 

He parks his truck, grabs his shovel and hops out.

“Leonard, hey!” he calls. 

The man straightens to look at him and Jim almost bursts out laughing.

He’s wearing what looks like a woolen peacoat. It has to be soaked by now with the sleet coming down. On his head is a thin beanie that doesn’t even cover his ears which are a bright red, as are his cheeks and his nose. There’s a scarf kind of protecting his mouth but it looks thin and is probably cashmere or some shit.

For fuck’s sake, he’s not even wearing boots.  
He looks absolutely miserable. He might even be shaking.

“You mind if I help?” He asks but he doesn’t wait for a response, just sets about clearing snow. Bones joins him.

“You know it’s a bitch on your back if you wait for it to get this heavy before shoveling. I like to start early and do it a few times. Lighten the load. Plus if you wait for it to stop you could be waiting a long time. Sometimes days.”

He wants to tell the man to go inside and change, warm up while he finishes the job but he doesn’t want to insult him or anything by accident.

“You gotta get to work soon?” He asks, trying to get Bones talking.

“No,” the man grunts. “I’m off for the weekend.” Oh yeah his teeth are definitely chattering. “Was going to the grocery store to get some food I don’t have to cook.”

“Oh I was there earlier, they’re pretty wiped. Just the petfood and the wine section left, really.” Jim informs him.

The man groans and just… deflates.

“What, you don’t have any like canned soup or anything you could heat up?”

“I have food- what I don’t have is electricity. Or heat.” Jim blinks. He realizes for the first time there’s no smoke coming out of the man’s chimney. He must not have gotten any wood delivered before winter hit. Probably didn’t even know he needed it.

Christ, Jim, berates himself, he’s from Georgia, why would he know about this stuff? 

“Or running water.” Bones continues. “How do y’all live like this?” He sounds so miserable, everything in Jim is screaming BRING HIM HOME and TAKE CARE OF HIM. Fuck but this is a bad idea.

He takes a deep breath. 

“You wanna come stay over to my place? I’m making beef stew and I’ve got a fire going so it’s pretty warm, maybe too warm. And I’ve got cookies.”

The look in Leonard’s eyes is one Jim will remember forever. Like Jim just pulled him out of a rushing river.

“You don’t mind? I’m not great company.” He asks, teeth clicking.

Jim laughs. “Me neither, man. Go get changed and pack whatever you need, you look soaked to the bone. I’ll be in my truck when you’re ready.”

As he throws his shovel into the back and slides into the driver’s seat Jim can’t stop grinning. He kind of hopes it keeps snowing.


End file.
